Newness

5 adventures turns into a lot of new experiences. Some were variations on a theme of old experiences - jungle hiking (in the rain). Twice. It was neat because I'd never actually seen a tropical rainforest, outside of pictures, even though the promised "light walks" turned out to be anything but (more like jungle death marches. On steep clay hills. In the rain). The jungle looked mostly like this:

Which was heady and gorgeous and mysterious and dark and wonderful (until it started raining). The payoff from one of the hikes was a chance to swim and sit under a waterfall (in the rain). In addition, we got to stand at the top of another waterfall. The view was magnificent, but we had cause to regret our stopoff later. Still, it was a stunning (if cloudy) view of the area:

The prizes for most alien experiences, however, definitely related to the trying of new things. Such as rappelling down cliffs over the yawning mouth of a cave into a giant sinkhole. We went in front of this:

Starting from here (Oh my lord yes I was ASCEEEEERED!):

Like so:

If you look to the right, you can see our rope. Our very skinny rope.

So that was a very interesting and heart-pounding and lower-lip protruding (when I was pouting and almost crying in fear) and near-panic inducing experience. Pretty cool!

But!

That didn't even hold a candle to the brave new world of UNDERWATER! I'd never been snorkeling before, or, come to think of it, ever really opened my eyes under water before. Not much to see in pools, lakes, beaches, and rivers, but at a coral reef? Oh My! I actually shrieked a little (under water. Not good.). It had been churny and raining the day before (huh, imagine that), but they decided to take us out anyway (mostly because the previous day it had rained so hard that they cancelled the trip), but to me, it was the clearest, bluest water I'd ever seen! (Well, when you've got no basis for comparison...) The disposal camera wasn't great, but here's a glimpse of what we saw:

Those electric-blue darty blobs are fishes! Beautiful fishes! I saw clownfish-ish things and electric yellow sunfish and all sorts of silvery, slippery things.

I HEART snorkeling.

The weird brain-looking plants wave at you and long, trailing "fingers" catch you if you're not careful! I never understood the whole "teeming with life"aspect of coral reefs until now. So I was quite distressed when I wasn't paying attention and almost banged into pieces several times. But not quite! Of course, it rained, and trip back was miserable and freezing, and oh! when I first jumped into the water (and looked down and shrieked, promptly taking in a lungful of water) I freaked out and couldn't breathe or float, so scrambled back into the boat and demanded my life jacket back. I gather that is not strictly "cool" but so what? I could float again! Maybe next time, sans panic attack, I'll test everyone's assertion that floating in salt water is easy. Even so, this was my favorite new thing! I can't wait to try again! I hear really good things about snorkeling in warm, sunny places...

Our last new thing was my first-ever professional massage. It was sumptuous and glorious and positively coma-inducing and over way too fast, but naturally I didn't take any pictures of that.

;-)